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late as the middle of the eighteenth century had three scales, Réaumur, Fahrenheit, and Florentine; one of these is in the possession of the Naturforschende Gesellschaft of Danzig. Réaumur, writing in 1730, speaks of Florentine thermometers as in common use.

III. Attempts to Obtain a Standard Scale from Boyle to Newton.

Through whom knowledge of the thermometers devised by the Florentine Academy reached England is not known, but it has been suggested that the French traveler Monconys conveyed it to the Hon. Robert Boyle on the occasion of his visit to London in 1663, and there is circumstantial evidence in favor of this view. Monconys was most politely received by the scholarly Irishman and attended a meeting of the Royal Society on the 30th of May; he had with him in London one of the new instruments and made an entry in his diary on the 31st May to this effect: "The weather was cold towards evening and the thermometer fell to 6.5 degrees."

While the Accademia del Cimento was busy experimenting on heat and cold, magnetism and acoustics, and trying to prove the "non--